Dirker was standing there with his sawed-off shotgun in his hands. Both barrels were leveled at the center of Clay’s back.
“Drop it,” he said.
Clay turned and lowered the hatchet, let it fall from his fingers. Let Cabe fall, too. “Goddammit, Dirker, ye always manage to spoil m’ fun.”
“You all right?” he said to Cabe.
Cabe, with assistance, found his feet.
Dirker marched Clay out the door at gunpoint, Cabe close at his heels. And all Cabe could think of was Dirker and his whip and now Dirker saving his hash and wasn’t it just goddamn funny how things had a way of coming around in the end?
20
After Clay was deposited in a jail cell, Cabe made his way back to the St. James Hostelry where Janice Dirker fawned over him, though nothing was really injured but his pride.
“You’re lucky to be alive, Mr. Cabe,” she kept saying as she drew him a bath. “Just darn lucky.”
“Well, the fact that I am…well, it’s your husband’s doing.”
“Jackson is a very dutiful man,” was all she would say on the matter.
Cabe had his bath and when he went back to his room, planning on taking a nice long nap while he had the chance, Janice was waiting for him there. She had changed his sheets and bedclothes, had built a little fire in the corner stove. It felt nice in there, warm and comfortable.
“Earlier this evening,” she said, “a man came to see you.”
Cabe laid on the bed. “Not another one of the Clays?”
“No. Nothing like that. This one was a very polished gentleman, said his name was Freeman.”
Cabe sat up. “Freeman?”
“Yes. Is that a problem?”
Cabe wanted to lie, but he couldn’t bring himself to. He told her who and what Freeman was, how he and Dirker had almost got him.
Janice looked decidedly pale, but recovered herself nicely as only a Southern lady could. “Well, yes, but I’m no prostitute.”
“He could’ve killed you nonetheless.”
And Cabe was figuring that was exactly what he’d had in mind. Freeman knew Cabe was after him and what better way to rub defeat in Cabe’s face than to not only slip away, but to slaughter the only woman in town he’d truly befriended.
Janice said, “He told me, told me to tell you…”
But it was getting to her now. Even all that breeding couldn’t fight the fear of what could have happened. Of what her death might have become. There was no getting around that. She allowed herself to be held and Cabe held her, liking the feel of her and smelling the wonderful musk of her flesh that no perfume could hope to mask.
“Tell me,” he said after a time.
She breathed deeply. “He said to tell you that he’s off for parts unknown. That you should not follow him… but, but to watch for signs of his work in other places in the years to come.”
“Did he say anywhere particular?”
“London. He said, in the coming years he would be busy in London.”
But then none of it seemed to matter and all those months of hunting seemed trivial. Freeman had spared Janice and Cabe didn’t know why and could never truly guess, but it was enough. Enough then as she flowed into his arms and they melted together into a delicious pool of something seething and moist that was made of flesh and limbs and hot, seeking mouths. And then it was done and they lay naked in one another’s arms, each speechless in the warm afterglow.
And each wondering, wondering, where it could possibly take them.
21
The morning after his wife made love to Tyler Cabe, Jackson Dirker was rooting through the remains of Redemption. The town was nearly destroyed. Even many, many hours after the initial attack that left no less than thirty dead (including Danites and vigilantes), the place was still smoldering. Though some homes were undamaged, most had been blasted or burned and there was stray livestock everywhere.
An icy rain was falling and Dirker stood amongst the wreckage in his yellow slicker, feeling something coil in his belly.
He was standing with a man named Eustice Harmony. Harmony had a farm well outside Redemption like many other Mormons. His family had taken in survivors from Redemption as had many others. But Harmony was more than just another Mormon squatter, he was a former resident of Deliverance.
And the half brother of James Lee Cobb…more or less.
More or less for nobody really knew who (or what) Cobb’s father was. His grandfather, the Minister Hope of Procton village, Connecticut, adopted him, packed him and his lunatic mother off to live with Arlen and Maretta Cobb in Missouri. And he himself left Procton shortly thereafter, for no one wanted anything to do with him or his church. They decided there was an evil taint on both. So the Minster moved to Illinois, remarried and, though he was well into his fifties, sired another family. One night, unable to resist the voices that tormented him, the Minister put a shotgun in his mouth and ended it. Eustice’s distraught mother christened all the children then with her family name, which was Harmony.
In 1853, Eustice Harmony joined the Church of Latter Day Saints in Nauvoo, Illinois, and shortly thereafter set off for the promised land along the Mormon Pioneer Trail which began in Nauvoo and ended far west near the Great Salt Lake.
Dirker was disgusted by what he saw. And truth be told, he was disgusted by just about everything in his job these days. For most of his life he’d been either a soldier or a lawman, had carried the respect and derision those offices inspire. But not once had he thought of being anything else.
Until now.
For, much as it pained him, he figured he’d had his fill.
He took Harmony aside out of the rain and into an old millinery that was still standing, had been dusted out and was being used by the volunteers as a dry-out shack. There was no one in there.
Dirker stood there, water dripping from him. “You know me, Eustice, you know the kind of man I am. I bear no prejudice against any. I’ve been good to you and your people. Have I not?”
Harmony nodded. “Yes, you have been that. We could not have hoped for a finer lawman than you. You have been fair to us.” Harmony took his hat off, studied the brim. “I know…we know…you have tried to break up these vigilantes, but sometimes, sometimes there are far worse things.”
“Such as?”
“The vigilantes raided Redemption the past two nights running. But last night-”
“Last night the Destroying Angels were waiting for them?”
Harmony would not verbally admit to that, but he nodded silently. “But there was more here than just these two groups. From what I have been told, another group of riders came in…and attacked both parties.”
Dirker swallowed. “This would be the same group responsible for what occurred in Sunset?”
“Yes.”
“And,” Dirker said, “would this group just happen to be riding out of Deliverance?”
“Yes,” Harmony sighed.
“Tell me about it, Eustice. I need to know now.”
